Red and Yellow Pepper Pizza
throwing the pizza in NOWWWWW!!!! 15 min til the BRUVS PIZZA PARTY
A vegetable pizza that does not come out of the oven wet, which is the only difficulty a vegetable pizza has.
Everything that holds water gets dealt with before it touches the dough. Peppers cut in wide strips, not dice — less cut surface, less liquid. Cherry tomatoes halved, salted and left in a sieve for twenty minutes, which is what that sieve on the board in the picture is doing.
Build it on the parchment and slide the whole thing in. No peel, no flour, no catastrophe halfway to the oven.
- Makes
- One 14-inch pizza
- Hands-on
- 25 minutes
- Dough
- Overnight, cold
- Tomatoes
- Drained 20 minutes
What you need
The dough
- 3 cups bread flour
- 1 1/4 cups cold water
- 1 tsp instant yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
On it
- 2 red bell peppers, in wide strips
- 2 yellow bell peppers, in wide strips
- 2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved and drained (from my garden)
- 3 cups low-moisture mozzarella, grated
- 2/3 cup crushed tomatoes, with salt and garlic
- Olive oil
- Dried oregano and chilli flakes
How it goes
1 — Cold overnight dough
Mixed until there is no dry flour and left covered in the fridge overnight. It comes out slack and easy to stretch and tastes of something.
2 — Halve and drain the cherry tomatoes
Cut, tossed with a pinch of salt, left cut side down in a sieve for twenty minutes. A surprising amount comes out, and all of it would have ended up on the pizza.
3 — Cut the peppers in wide strips
Long strips rather than dice. Less cut surface means less water released, and they hold their shape and colour instead of collapsing into the cheese.
pro tip — If you want them soft rather than with a bite, roast the strips on a tray for ten minutes first and let them cool before they go on.
4 — Stretch it on parchment, not on the counter
Dough stretched out on a sheet of parchment on a board. Everything is built there and the parchment goes into the oven with it. No peel, no sticking, no disasters.
5 — Cheese first, under the vegetables
Sauce thin, then the mozzarella, then peppers and tomatoes on top. Cheese underneath makes a seal between the dough and everything wet above it.
6 — Oven as hot as it goes, with a tray preheated
500°F or higher, with a heavy baking tray or an upturned sheet pan in there getting hot for half an hour. That is a pizza stone for nothing.
7 — Parchment and all, straight onto the hot tray
Twelve to fourteen minutes. At the eight-minute mark slide the parchment out from under it and let the base finish on the bare hot metal.
8 — Oil, oregano and chilli at the end
A thin drizzle of olive oil over the hot pizza, oregano crushed between your palms, chilli flakes. Rest it two minutes before cutting.
Fifteen minutes til the BRUVS PIZZA PARTY. You got yours ready? LFG.